Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasugarn hopes to clean up against Jelena Jankovic at Wimbledon after lifting the lid on her bathroom superstition.
Tamarine, 31, faces Serbian second seed Jankovic in the fourth round and has no intention of changing the ritual she has followed to the brink of her best ever Grand Slam performance.
Before every match, Tamarine uses the same shower and toilet in the women’s locker room and, suitably refreshed, she has gone out to win three matches in a Grand Slam for the first time since 2004.
PHOTO: AP
“This year I went to the same toilet and shower before every match. I’m not usually superstitious. I just feel comfortable in that room, I don’t know why,” Tamarine said.
A victory over Jankovic, who faces a race to be fit after suffering a knee injury against Caroline Wozniacki in the third round, would clinch a first appearance in the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam for the Thai, who has come agonizingly close on seven occasions.
Six times at Wimbledon and once at the Australian Open she has made it to the last 16 and gone no further.
Tamarine admits she used to agonize over those defeats, but now she takes a more mature, relaxed approach that befits the oldest player left in the women’s singles at Wimbledon.
“I’ve played the fourth round many times here at Wimbledon and I was really keen to go on to the quarter-finals. When I didn’t make it I was so disappointed,” she said. “But this year, I just said getting to the fourth round of Wimbledon, or any Grand Slam, is really good already. If I made the quarter-final that’s great, but if I lost in the last 16 that’s still good. If I win or lose I’m still happy.”
“I think it’s good to be over 30 and happy. You focus better than when you are in your 20s,” she said. “You have experience. You have good times and bad times and you learn from it. I think I’m happy the way I am, even if I’m the oldest one. I know how to think about tennis and life, so you enjoy it and understand more. I’m not so serious and always thinking I have to win. If you don’t do well you have another tournament to do well in.”
Tamarine lost her only previous meeting with Jankovic on clay in Strasbourg last year, a performance she has completely forgotten.
“Did I play her before? I can’t remember, I’ll have to check,” she said. “Jelena is a tough opponent for me. She’s made such good performances in the last couple of years and she’s No. 3 in the world right now. It’s good for me to have the chance to play against her. I’m happy to be this far and I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier